Even before the announcement that he’d been diagnosed with brain cancer, Sen. John McCain was facing special venom from his enemies — including some Republicans, notes Elliot Kaufman at National Review. Dianna Orrock, a GOP national committeewoman from Nevada, replied “Amen” to a tweet calling on the Arizona senator to “die already.” Sadly, they’re not alone: McCain remains “a hate figure for the Left and the once-fringe Right alike.” Read about his courage and determination under horrific torture in Hanoi and “you begin to understand why it is so important for some to malign McCain’s character or to deny him his hero status, as our president did.” To them, “he must be some sort of sellout or some sort of crazy.” But he’s really “just an American hero.”

From the left: Trump’s Biggest Success By Far

President Trump “is proving wildly successful in one respect: naming youthful conservative nominees to the federal bench in record-setting numbers,” contends Ronald Klain at The Washington Post. In his first six months in office, Trump not only put Neil Gorsuch on the high court, he “also selected 27 lower-court judges as of mid-July.” That’s “three times Obama’s total and more than double the totals of Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton — combined.” Moreover, “Trump’s picks are astoundingly young. Obama’s early Court of Appeals nominees averaged age 55; Trump’s nine picks average 48.” Which means “many of Trump’s judicial nominees will be deciding the scope of our civil liberties and the shape of civil rights laws in the year 2050 — and beyond.”

Conservative: The True History of ‘Dunkirk’ Matters

Never has “so much ignorance been rendered on such a great feat by so few,” laments Tom Rogan at the Washington Examiner — by which he means the reviews being written about the new WWII epic, “Dunkirk,” which chronicles the heroic rescue of 340,000 Allied troops from Nazi capture. USA Today’s Brian Tuttle’s review bemoaned the lack of women characters and “no lead actors of color.” Asks Rogan: “What measure of honor would there be to inject ‘actors of color’ into a historical event in which no persons of color served?” Peter Travers at Rolling Stone suggests failure at Dunkirk would have meant “we’d all be living a real version of ‘The Man in the High Castle.’ ” That ignores the role of Britain’s Royal Air Force — not to mention the United States and Soviet Union. Bottom line: “History matters.”

Policy wonk: How Hoboken Stifles School Success

The city of Hoboken, NJ, “has spent three years and more than $200,000 of taxpayer money in an effort to impede the growth of its most successful school,” reports Charles Upton Sahm at City Journal. That’s HoLa, formerly the Hoboken Dual Language Charter School, which opened in 2010. It now ranks “in the top 10 percent of all public schools in the state in terms of math and English test scores.” But in 2013, despite state approval, Hoboken’s Board of Education sued to block HoLa’s expansion to grades seven and eight, spuriously claiming it would “aggravate racial segregation.” Simply put, “the anti-charter board of education saw an opportunity to thwart a charter’s expansion.” Not until last month did an appellate court reject the lawsuit, which cost taxpayers “well over $200,000.”
Energy desk: Should the US Revive Nuclear Power?

For many Americans, the search for alternative energy sources centers on the political-environmentalist agenda of “foregoing coal and oil in favor of wind, hydroelectric or solar power.” But none of these “is a panacea,” warns Michael Rubin at Commentary, who urges a turn back to nuclear power, citing a new Hoover Institution book which argues that the United States “won’t be able to solve its energy needs without nuclear power playing a major role.” Nuclear power currently provides about 20 percent of US electricity, but “two-thirds of carbon and pollution-free power produced.” It “releases less radioactivity into the surrounding environment than burning coal” and has “produced less death and injury to humans than any other form of energy production.”